Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common functional bowel disorder accounting for a significant proportion of patients seen in gastroenterology practice..sup.1 It is characterised by chronic or recurrent abdominal pain and disturbed defecation. studies in the U.S.A. and Australia suggests that between 10% and 20% of the population suffer from this disorder..sup.2,3,4,5 There is no single treatment available that is reliably effective for this condition..sup.6,7 Patients use a variety of approaches to assist in its management including drugs, dietary modifications, counselling, and more recently Chinese herbal medicine (CHM)..sup.8
According to the fundamental principals of practice in traditional Chinese medicine, treatment should be tailored to the individual clinical presentation of patients, even though they may all have the same western medical diagnosis..sup.8,14,15 Furthermore, treatment needs to be modified at different stages of the patient's illness or recovery. However, such an approach to treatment of disease can be cumbersome and is not entirely compatible with conventional pharmaceutical and medical practice.
Thus, there is a need for effective standardised Chinese herbal medicinal preparations for the treatment of gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome and for appropriately rigorous clinical study design for assessing their efficacy.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an effective treatment of gastrointestinal disorders, such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), which would ameliorate at least some of the disadvantages of the prior art therapies and methods, or at least provide useful alternatives.